ABSTRACT
Abetz, Otto (1903–58) German Ambassador to Vichy France, Otto Abetz was born on 26 May 1903 in Schwetzingen and matriculated in Karlsruhe, where he became an art teacher at a girls’ school. He was a supporter of the NSDAP from 1931 and took up relations with French ex-servicemen on its behalf. In January 1935 he entered the Foreign Service under von Ribbentrop (q.v.). His activities as its Paris representative led to his expulsion from France in 1939, but following the German occupation (after the fall of France), Abetz returned in June 1940 and in November received accreditation as German Ambassador – a post he held for four years. The embassy was theoretically responsible for all political questions in occupied and non-occupied France, and for advising the German police and military. Abetz's primary objective was to secure complete collaboration from the French, but as a Party activist – he held the rank of SS-Standartenführer — he also sought to seize the initiative as much as possible – suggesting, for example, that all emigre, stateless Jews should be expropriated and expelled to the Free Zone. Abetz regarded anti-semitism as an important lever in undermining the grip of the army and church in Vichy France and replacing it by a pro-German, anti-clerical, populist mass movement. In July 1949 he was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labour by a Paris military tribunal, as a war criminal. Released in April 1954 he was burned to death in a motor ‘accident’ four years later on the Cologne—Ruhr autobahn when something went wrong with the steering wheel of his speeding car. His death may have been a revenge killing for his role in sending French Jews to the gas chambers.
